Obudu Vacation – CHAPTER X (4)

So she began, “Fury, I haven’t had time to be with you alone and tell you how sorry I am. I know my mom came around and apologized to you and your mom, but I know I still owe you an explanation and a personal apology. You must understand that I never intended to see you hurt. That day in the lab, I felt you were well seated and only wanted to simulate pulling the bench off you just to get you to react but unfortunately, it led to this.” she said as she pointed my hanging leg.

“It’s okay Laura, I’ll live.” I said to her reassuringly.

“You know, I was kinda expecting you to scream and charge at me, but only to realize that it was something worse. At that point I began to regret not heeding Mr. Etim’s (seminar coordinator) advice that we should stop the beef going on between us.” she said, becoming emotional.“I never had a beef with you Laura…” I tried to explain.“But you avoid and snub me?” she cut in.

“That doesn’t mean I’m beefing you. You have so many friends, followers and admirers. There’s no point in me being one of them. You take people for granted too much and you’ve always struck me as a snub. Everything seemed to revolve around your world without you minding the casualties you leave behind by your actions and inaction. Agreed, you’re from a wealthy home and you lack nothing as everything seems to work in your favour, but because of these reasons, you find it convenient when looking down on people you consider below you. This is not even minding if you’re in the same class with them, hence for you to respect them as mates. I don’t hate you, at least I admire your beauty, but all I’ve been doing was to steer clear off your path. Not like I had any personal ish with you.” I replied her while looking up the ceiling, not minding if she was hurt or not. I felt I also owed her the truth about what I really felt towards her.

After being silent for a few seconds, the only thing she could say was, “So you find me beautiful?”Laughingly I answered her, “Geez! Laura, that’s the problem I have with you. You’re so full of yourself. So, of all the things I mentioned here, all you picked was the I admire your beauty part?”

“Despite everything going on, Fury had always admired me. Gosh! You don’t know what that means to me. That the only guy I really liked actually liked me too.” she said, looking in my eyes.Chuckling, I told her, “You seriously need help Laura,” before I continued, “At least for the past years, I succeeded in avoiding you until your drama on Friday.”

Chuckling too, she said, “As a matter of fact ehn, I had been bothered about the possibility of me approaching you the previous day to give you my presentation when I learned you were to control the slides. I begged Cindy to do it for me but she insisted I must meet you today (that day). So I told her okay but I still couldn’t be the first one to talk to you so I decided I’ll give it to you the next day. It turned out I copied just my front and introduction page which coincidentally had the same title as the main document. So, when I was on stage and realized the mistake I had made, the only thing that came to my head instantly was to turn it on you…”

“Yeah, and it worked,” I cut in.

“Cindy was confused. She had always supported you over me even though she pretends not to like you. But at that moment, l could see how angry she was with you because she believed I had given it to you the previous day. But she nearly ate me raw during the break when I opened up to her,” she revealed.

“I guess it’s all over now…” I said in defeat.“Yeah, only I didn’t realize that and ended up getting you a bed space in the hospital,” she said in a remorseful tone.“You’re so sweet when you’re remorseful,” I told her, while giving her a light punch on her shoulder.

She went on to tell me how she admired how my mom doted me like an only child, how she joked with her and never mentioning or reproaching her for what she did. She also mentioned how mom and her mom struck up an attraction for each other the day they met, saying her mom had confided in her saying my mom was such a nice person because if it were her, (her mom) she wouldn’t have been all nice had it been that the reverse was the case and she (Laura) was hurt by me.

That was how Laura and I became close friends. 6 weeks after being admitted in the hospital, I was discharged though with crutches to aid my walking. I resumed school and lectures having missed a lot, but fortunately, I got lecture notes to read while admitted.

Least I forget, Laura and I had the same project supervisor and coincidentally had similar project topics. While I was to work on blood samples from students as my specimen, she was to make use of blood samples from our patients at the teaching hospital. We spent most nights together in the laboratory.